


Jack of All Trades

by Copper_Nails (Her_Madjesty)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Meet-Cute, Tally Mark Tattoos, Tattoo Artist!Jyn, Tattoos, Unresolved Emotional Tension, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12220239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Copper_Nails
Summary: Jyn meets Cassian before the Resistance comes for her, and he requests something...odd.Or:Cassian keeps a tally of the men he's killed just between his shoulder blades. Jyn is there when he marks down another.





	Jack of All Trades

Sometimes, when the day’s dragged on for too long, and business has been slow, Jyn looks past the Ring of Kafrene’s lights and smog and tries to name the stars.

The rock’s perpetuate gray leaves her idle brain dry and curious – that’s the reason, she tells herself, that she wonders when exactly the Empire decide that only certain planets deserved to recognize the space they were living in. It’s environmental policy from a child farm girl trying to make sense of the city, and whenever her thoughts stray too far (black sand, wet air, smoke and blaster fire -), Jyn clenches fists until her nails draw blood from her hands.

(Really, someone needs to do something about the air pollution on the Ring of Kafrene, if only to stop Jyn from thinking about it.)

She cracks her neck and settles back beneath her awning, tucked away from the bustle of the Ring’s major walkways. After scanning the crowd for clientele, Jyn pulls a Corellian apple from her tucked away pack and a knife from her belt. She peels it, frowning when the juice sneaks under her fingerless gloves and onto her palm. The apple’s skin is tough, but sweet. She stuffs it into her mouth whenever her knife slips; if she were to smile (unlikely), she knows she’d find some of it stuck between her teeth.

As it is, any excess is likely to be pointed out by the woman sitting a few paces from Jyn’s side. She doesn’t have a name (or, at least, she hasn’t given Jyn one), but Jyn’s come to recognize the shifts of her face and the hunger in her wrinkles.

They share few words, the occasional supper, and a tattoo gun between them.

When the skin of Jyn’s apple is gone, she cuts the fruit in half. The woman smiles when she hands the white meat over.

Jyn licks her fingers free of apple drippings and scans the crowd again.

The patterns of movement are easy to detect; every fifteen minutes comes a rotation of bucket heads; between them come the smugglers, traders, and one circulating, gray-skinned Gungan. Jyn does her best not to stare at the gills and looks for marks, instead. Work. Something interesting. _Anything_.

She’s nearly done with her apple when there’s a rustle in the crowd. Her eyes catch on a greasy head of hair. There’s a body trying not to be seen – and failing. Whoever he is, he’s portly and clearly nervous. Jyn tilts her head, her face a mask of disgusted pity. Whatever he’s up to, there’s no question to it: he’s going to get caught.

Despite her distraction, Jyn still sees the figure shuffling over to her side. She doesn’t turn, though, until they’ve settled, and even then, until they’ve coughed.

She looks back, feigning disinterest.

His fur-lined jacket looks too hot for the Ring, but it lines his shoulders well. As for the details – Jyn squints at him, catches sight of a once-broken nose. His face is half cast in shadow, rendering the look of him...less than noticeable.

(Jyn knows what hiding looks like.)

“Can I help you?” she asks.

“Perhaps,” the man replies. “I’m looking to get a tattoo. Are you Kestrel Dawn?”

Jyn looks him over once more. There’s no earnestness in his eyes, nor anything playful about his casual smile. That’s his signature, she decides; he’s – intense. Too intense.

“Do you have the credits?”

The man slides over fifty without a word. Jyn takes them in hand and examines them before turning to her companion.

The woman holds out her hand, in turn.

Jyn sighs through her nose before dividing the credits in half. She has to endure her companion’s secondary examination before she’s handed their tattoo gun.

“Fifty won’t get you anything big,” Jyn says. “What’re you looking for? Be specific.”

The man’s moved closer to her work crate; he’s hesitating, now, like he wants to sit. “Nothing difficult,” he tells her. “Just a mark.”

Jyn raises an eyebrow.

“A tally.”

A bounty hunter, then. Jyn tilts her head, considering. Well, he’s got the face for it.

“Where?”

To her surprise, the man glances back towards the mulling crowd. The shuffle’s gotten worse – the greasy man is gone, but the ‘troopers are early in their rotation. Jyn sees two tables swept clean in an instant and winces as hidden blasters begin to sing.

The man still hasn’t answered.

“Sometime today, _or’dinii_.”

He looks back at her, face cool, eyes surprised. “Come again?”

Jyn shuffles on her work crate and looks pointedly at the empty space in front of her. She continues to stare until her client – slowly – sits down.

“Where do you want your mark?” she asks. It’s more a sigh than anything else.

Her ire seems to make her companion smile. He stays quiet as he shucks his jacket off, though he does glance at her briefly before shrugging off his shirt.

Jyn makes no move to stop him. When he’s bared his skin, she studies the lines of his back and the cluster of tally marks right between his shoulder blades.

“What’s the matter with you?” The words slip out without her permission. “Do you have something on your inner thigh, too? Maybe your nipples?”

She sees him school his face into a neutral mask, though the shake of his shoulders makes it seem as though he wants to laugh. He turns so she can see his chest.

“Fine, not on your nipples,” Jyn says with a huff. “So you just like pain.”

“Something like that,” her client replies, serene. His gaze, Jyn notices, has left her and returned to the skittish crowd. The neutrality of his face slips some as he frowns. “Looks like things are getting messy.”

Jyn shrugs. She reaches behind her, palm up, and waits for the cool touch of the green soap bottle in her hand. “No more than usual,” she replies. “Don’t worry. I’ll make this quick.”

She sprays cleanser onto his skin before he can respond and relishes the way he winces. “Oh, come on,” she mutters. “It’s not that cold.”

Her client says nothing.

Jyn sets the bottle aside and waits a moment for the spray to settle. She turns away from the man’s broad back and fiddles with the tattoo gun, checking and rechecking the disposable tip. Idly, she scans through the crowd. The nervous man is back – is he pacing? - and the ‘troopers have remained. They stand at the front of each alley offshoot with their blasters at rest in their hands.

“Yeah, alright,” Jyn hears herself say. “This could be bad.”

Again, her client doesn’t speak. She turns back to find him tense, watching the pacing man with a kind of beleaguered exasperation.

Jyn tilts her head and almost – _almost –_ smirks.

“Ready?” she asks, instead.

Her client hums, then nods.

His skin, when she touches it, burns with heat. Jyn settles back behind him, smoothing out her work area and observing – professionally. He’s an attractive enough man, sure, for all he tries to be discreet; even the lack of conversation could arguably be considered appealing. Jyn doesn’t know if she’d be able to pick him out from a line up of other men, though, and that’s -

Suspicious.

Jyn narrows her eyes, her tongue peeking out of her mouth as she presses the needle against her client’s skin. Despite the tenderness of the area, he doesn’t hiss, doesn’t make a sound – barely moves. He just breathes.

The nervous man disappears into the crowd again.

“So,” Jyn says (and she’s not even sure why she’s talking, but she can see her client’s eye twitching, and it feels appropriate, somehow). “How did you hear of me?”

Her client remains still, though Jyn can sense the moment he shifts his attention back to her. “No mutual friends you need to worry about,” he says, near reassuring. “I heard your name when I was docking.”

Jyn bristles. “Why would I worry about mutual friends?” Her hands, despite her tone, remain steady. “You mean you’re not the average, upstanding citizen of the galaxy?”

Her client snorts. It seems accidental. He doesn’t respond, though, just watches as the nervous man cycles into the crowd again.

Jyn wants to shake her head for the senselessness of it. “No, you wouldn’t be,” she continues. She keeps her voice light, but a nail digs into the man’s skin like a threat. “These tallies have to mean something. I doubt you’ve got one for each good deed you’ve done.”

“You never know,” her client replies. There’s a stiffness to him now that, were he anyone else, Jyn would write off as pain. Across the way, the nervous man has settled next to a Bothan and has his head bent low in conversation.

Jyn grunts, putting off her response. She shifts on the crate and brings herself closer to the man’s back, brushing away the stray hairs that have fallen onto the back of his neck. It leaves her hovering and lets her speak more directly in his ear.

“Still,” she says, “this sort of thing seems a bit risky, given your line of work.”

Her client shivers. Jyn grins. She’s backed away by the time he’s turned his head; despite the movement, she keeps her tattooing hand steady. She lets her client study her as she works (though she may add a little too much pressure with her next pass of his skin – maybe).

The two of them are too close together for her to miss the way his eyes narrow. “Do I know you?” he asks, too casual.

Jyn meets his gaze, one eyebrow artfully lifted. “I doubt it,” she says. Then, with a final pass, she pulls her gun away from his skin and smacks his shoulder. “There you go. All done.”

The man jumps, but he doesn’t stop staring. Jyn looks back, smug (though her pulse flickers faster; he’s studying her too closely; she’s going to have to get onto the lanes again, and soon).

“I’m not going to give you the usual spiel about keeping this clean,” she tells him. “You’ll want to keep from irritating it, though.”

The man blinks.

“Which means no temp-grafts,” Jyn continues, a little more slowly. She waits until recognition overtakes the man’s face. “No body paint, either.”

“That’s not really my style.” He seems to regret saying it the moment he does, but the words are out. Jyn considers him as he tucks his surprise behind his neutral mask. The quiet between them punctures with every shift of Stormtrooper armor nearby, every set of boots that tromps past the crate.

“Thank you,” the man says at last, too slow and more than a little wary.

Jyn scoots further back on her crate and waves him away. “Your friend is waiting for you.”

To her great amusement, the man holds perfectly still. He stares at her until she clears her throat and nods towards his shirt. He moves quickly, after that, pulling his shirt back on while the tips of his ears burn red. She pretends not to see him wince when he shrugs on his coat and turns away so he can pretend that the nervous man isn’t already making his way towards the two of them.

“There you are, Joreth,” the nervous man says. He sounds squeaky and sweaty. Jyn doesn’t look at him.

“Sorry for the delay, Tivik,” her client – Joreth ( _yeah right_ _)_ says. “I just had to finish up here.”

Jyn endures the flash of Tivik’s eyes over her establishment and registers with pleasure the moment he dismisses her. “Well, come on,” he says to Joreth. “Why don’t you and I go get a pint?”

Jyn’s eyes stay on her tattoo gun as she begins to take it apart; she doesn’t see the look Joreth shoots her, questioning, before he walks away. She remains blissfully unaware of the message he taps out to his droid - “Company in the market; may be compromised.”

Instead, Jyn does what she does best. When Joreth’s voice has disappeared into the crowd, Jyn hands the disassembled gun over to her companion and packs what little of her things she has around her. Across the alley, she can see the bucket heads attempting subtly while they track Joreth and his friend.

Jyn gives the two of them an hour before things go up in flames.

She nods to her companion as she finishes filling her pack. The woman nods back and doesn’t try to stop her as Jyn rises.

Without a glance backwards, Jyn walks away.

The Ring’s crowds swallow her in a heartbeat. Jyn keeps her ears open, catches word of a transport heading off planet that’s set to depart within the hour. She turns and makes her way down to the docks, all without saying a word.

(The transport, it turns out, is a hair too slow, and Joreth, it seems, is less subtle than he thinks. When she’s shackled and surrounded by bucket heads bound for Wobani, Jyn curses him for his _shavit_ timing and his laughing, suspicious eyes.)


End file.
